Little Fighter

I met her recently. In a dream. Or maybe it was a nightmare? Whatever it was, it was the first time in over 30 years that we were reunited. She was feral. Not in a dirt-under-her-fingernails, messy hair, skinned knees, musty-smell kind of way. Feral in that gravity was no match for her. She wasn’t standing upright or able to walk, it was more of a spidery crawl on all fours. She was feral in that her face was smeared with blood. Whose blood? How had it gotten there? Why was it there? Feral in that the sounds she made were only screeches and screams. They carried the frequency of a very specific violation. So feral that her mouth wasn’t a mouth anymore. It was a portal to the hell she had lived through. She wasn’t feral because she didn’t go to school, or lived close to so-called nature. She was feral because she had been exiled from my body, from my mind, from my psyche. Caught in an open loop, in an alternate reality.

She came to me in an aisle at a grocery store. Making a mess. Causing a scene. Screaming. Thrashing about. No one else seemed to notice. How could no one notice her? Were they so scared of her they muted their own senses when she was around? They must protect themselves at all costs. 

It was immediately apparent that she wanted blood. That she wanted to kill someone, and that maybe she already had. It was also immediately apparent that she was my responsibility. I had to take care of her. We had found each other— after all of this time and all of this distance. My contract with her wasn't to clean her up. It wasn’t to train her to walk like me or how to use her words. It was to witness her in her power, her agony, her anger, and her wrath. 

We walked outside to the woods. I didn’t know where else to bring a feral, blood-thirsty three-year-old. It seemed like a safe place. There was more space for her. But this was not what she wanted. I had to look her in the eye, see her little chest rising and falling, barley containing a furiously beating heart. I had to see her seething mouth, covered in someone’s blood. I had to feel her intent to cause more pain than had been inflicted on her. This was not an eye for an eye. This was a life for a life. I knew her kill list. It contained three entries: the one that did this to her, the one that didn’t notice, and everyone else. It was notable that she wasn’t on her own list. She wasn’t done. She hadn’t given up. She wasn’t drowning in pity. She was not a victim. This had unlocked a deeper well of power.

At that moment, I thanked myself for the endless game of hide-and-seek that we had played. If she had been integrated sooner, I would not be here today. Not Whole like I am. Not healing like I am. How lethal it would have been to stay in my own body then. It was an important attunement to let course through my body: how much rage that little fighter had in her.